Browsing by Subject "moniäänisyys"

Aims The purpose of this research was to analyze the evaluation of adults' vocational competence and the possibilities of learning partnership in a triangular evaluation discussion between the student, teacher and representatives of work life. The development of evaluation is important in a vocational skills demonstration system, where mature students are aimed to be trained effectively for working life and for the needs of the job market. The starting point of the research was to investigate how the evaluation discussion appears as a multivoiced interaction situation, and how the student's voice is present and heard in a joint evaluation process. The identification of disturbances breaks and innovations and the hearing of the student's voice in the evaluation discussion are important in order to develop the system. The research questions were: 1. What kind of disturbances, breaks and innovations there occur in the evaluation discussion? 2. How is the student's voice heard in the multivoiced evaluation discussion? Methods The research data consisted of five final examination evaluation discussions of social and health sciences basic degree students. The data was collected through recording the evaluation discussions and interviewing the participants separately after the evaluation. The researcher participated as an observer in the evaluation discussion. The methods of Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research were applied to study the disturbances, breaks and innovations in a multivoiced discussion, as well as to study the multivoicedness. The researcher further developed these methods by means of a network perspective to illuminate the different voices in a triangular discussion. Two objects of discussion were differentiated, the work under evaluation and the evaluation discussion. Results The research produced knowledge about the nature of the evaluation discussions and their multivoicedness. The evaluation discussions turned out to be relatively teacher-driven discussions, where various disturbances and breaks were present. Large amount of the disturbances was focused on the evaluation discussion, whereas the breaks and innovations were evenly focused on the evaluation discussion and the work situation under evaluation. The disturbances were already noticed during the evaluation discussion and the participants considered them as a rather natural part of the situation. Instead, the breaks and innovations were missed and only became evident in the researcher's analysis and in the interviews with the participants. Therefore, the development potential of breaks and innovations cannot be utilised unless they are consciously scrutinised. The most important type of breaks was the ambiguities in evaluation during the evaluation discussion. The most important type of innovations was the cooperation effort between the participants of evaluation. The voice of students was partly overridden by the voices of evaluators particularly when the self-evaluation and grade suggestion by the student were discussed. The students' voice was emphasised when the focus of the discussion was one's own work and even the development of the whole work community. On the basis of the research results it could be concluded that the evaluation discussions are still predominantly oriented towards the evaluation situation and the formal evaluation task, which could be expanded towards addressing the work by strengthening the voice of the student. This would also create better prerequisites for a more genuine learning partnership and its further development.

The multivoiced and shared activity of teaching staff participation in school project design was researched. Currently The Finnish national board of education instructs that there is a representative of the users of the school present in the design of a school building. In the current study the users, including the teaching staff, was represented in the user meetings by the property manager of the Premises center of the city. As there were not members of the teaching staff present in the user meetings, it was of interest how their voices are heard by the design team in the process. The research questions are: 1) How did the teaching staff contribute to the design of the school? 2) What was the content of the teaching staff's contribution to the design of the school construction? 3) How were the comments from the teaching staff to the designers processed and how were the decision based on these comments made? The research data comprised of an audio recording of an interview with representative of the user and nine video recordings of user meetings, where the design team assembled. All of the data was transcribed and speech episodes regarding the teaching staff's comments were analyzed. To answer first research question the interview with the representative of the user was utilized. To answer the second research question the speech episodes were categorized for their topic and percentages calculated for each topic. To answer the third research question four topics were chosen and the decision making process of the design team followed by building a trajectory for each topic. The teaching staff commented on the designs by writing and drawing directly on the 2D-paper plans. The representative of the user forwarded these comments to the design team. In rare occasions the school principle would approach the design team directly via e-mail. A major share of the teaching staff's comments considered furniture and equipment. These are familiar, important and tangible topics for the teaching staff. The decision making process of the design team was often lengthy. The teaching staff's comments very rarely had an effect on the made decisions. The reasons for this were structural, financial and on occasion ideological. The participation of the teaching staff could be enhanced by utilizing 3D-modeling.